Unknown Under the Pansies
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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC03523.41.129 Author/Creator: Unknown Place Written: s.l. Type: Poem Date: Circa 1864 Pagination: 1 p. : envelope ; Order a Copy
One undated poem cut from a newspaper. The poem is titled Under the Pansies.
[Draft Created by Crowdsourcing]
UNDER THE PANSIES.
Across the kickyard path I go;
The air is delicate and sweet;
Yet, somehow, as I pass, the blood
Subdues its forvor and its heat,
For there's a grave beside the tower
And there are pansies at my feet.
A little grave, cut off from all,
On which the rounded shadow falls;
Close guarded by a willow tree,
From whose green core the shilfa calls
And where, when Summer eve is low,
The mavis pipes sweet madrigals
It was a brief, mysterious life-
Her life, whom late we buried here;
It saw the promise of the Spring,
But not the harvest of the year;
The sweet head drooped beneath the sun,
Ere yet the sun has turned it sere.
A spirit entered at our door,
In fairest vestiments of clay;
The lamp was lit, the board was spread,
And we entreated it to stay;
But, voiceless as the phantom came,
So voicelessly it passed away.
It knew us not-we knew it not;
How could we hope to penetrate
The robe of perfect silence which
Upon its limbs unwrinkled sate-
The robe whose borders caught the sheet
That glows beneath the folded gate?
Weak words were ours-vague forms of thought
Which rested with the striving sense;
Her solemn eyes looked straight in ours-
The pure lids raised her suspense;
Our language was the speech of flesh;
And hers the angel's resistance.
Yet, when the starry Christmas morn
Came, and with one reluctant sigh,
She cast her gentle weeds aside,
<text loss> passed into the sky,
<text loss> we had given
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